Wigmaker Miriam Yarimi, who mowed down a Brooklyn mom and her two young children with her speeding luxury sedan, is now claiming in a civil action that she’s not liable because she blacked out during an medical episode — despite taking “full responsibility” at her sentencing.
Yarimi, 33, who’s serving a three-to-nine year sentence for manslaughter, is being sued by her victims’ family. She filed an affidavit in Brooklyn Supreme Court last week in an attempt to stave off a summary judgment in the case.
“After traveling on Ocean Parkway for approximately five seconds, I had a medical emergency which caused me to lose consciousness,” Yarimi wrote, saying that when she came to, her airbag was deploying right before her Audi A3 flipped over. “It is my contention that but for the medical emergency that I experienced this accident would not have happened.”
That’s a far cry from her weepy statement before Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge Danny Chun in November, when she said, “There’s a lot of sorrow and pain, remorse, regret I feel in my heart for causing such an unspeakable tragedy. I accept full responsibility for my actions.”
Yarimi admitted under oath that her recklessness caused the fatal crash when she pleaded guilty before Chun in October.
Yarimi was speeding north on Ocean Parkway in Midwood, her pedal to the floor and the odometer at 68 mph, when she ran through a red light and crashed her Audi A3 into a Toyota Camry Uber at Quentin Road on March 29, 2025. She then plowed into Natasha Saada, 35, and her three children, Diana, 8, Deborah, 5, and Philip, 4, who were crossing Ocean Parkway in the crosswalk.
Of the Saada family, only little Philip survived.
“This is an outrageous, if not, quite frankly, disgusting maneuver, trying to avoid a civil damages claim by changing her excuse for the accident,” said lawyer Hershel Kulefsky, who’s representing the Saada family. ” It’s disgusting. If it’s a penny out of her pocket in a civil case, she’ll make another excuse.”
As part of her civil lawsuit defense, Yarimi is suing the owner and driver of the Uber she struck as a third-party defendant, claiming “their negligence was the proximate cause of the accident.”
Yarimi’s lawyer, Michael Maddaloni, did not immediately return messages seeking comment Tuesday.
Right after the crash, Yarimi told cops, “The devil is in my eyes. I am haunted inside. I didn’t kill anyone. I didn’t hurt anyone. Prove it. Show me the proof. You have no proof.”
She demanded a CT scan for her eyes and said she’d been “raped by cops” at age 14, echoing allegations she made in a 2023 lawsuit that an NYPD officer groomed and raped her throughout her teenage years after she was arrested for shoplifting. The city settled her suit for $2 million.
Yarimi discussed faking mental illness in one recorded jail call to her ex last year, according to prosecutors, and in another call, when her ex suggested she apologize, she told him, “Why should I apologize? I’m just as much of a victim as they are.”
Chun offered her sentence in exchange for a guilty plea over the objection of prosecutors, who were asking for the maximum of five to 15 years. She could be eligible for parole as early as March 2028.
Prosecutors said Yarimi was on her phone and blew several red lights before the crash, and had a suspended license for a lapse in her insurance.
Her car, which has the vanity plate “WIGM8KER,” racked up nearly $11,000 in traffic and parking violations, including 21 speed-camera tickets and five red-light tickets, according to data on howsmydrivingny.nyc.
